APES- Bushmeat DNA Blast Assignment

Backstory: Imagine you are working with conservationists in Cameroon. You want to help them identify potential poachers and help them to enforce local poaching laws. You need to identify which vendors are selling the poached meat but it is in pieces and hard to identify the species by sight- what do you do? Instructions: 1: Using the DNA Blast Program- http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi type in the DNA sequence into the nucleotide blast. Choose the Nucleotide blast. Under Database, make sure to choose other. 2: Using the results from the blast, type the organism name into google to find out what organism you have. Common !ame" Background: Bushmeat is e!e ed to as all "ildli!e species used !o meat# including th eatened and endange ed species. Bushmeat is ve y common in $ent al A! ica !o it%s cheap p otein sou ce as "ell as t aditional appeal to u ban uppe and middle class people. &ve the yea s hunting !o !o these animals has been a 't adition( i! you may !o many people# they g e" up believing that that is the "ay to p ovide !o themselves and thei !amily# but as a esult causing a lot o! the animals used )li*e Dui*e s+ to become endange ed. Because the e is little en!o cement being done about this c isis odents li*e g eat cane at "e e hunted o!ten "hich esulted in local e,tinction as "ell as p imates. -he esults ! om all this damage leads to the ove all question# "ho is a!!ected. Besides the animals those "ho consume Bushmeat a e also a!!ected. $onsumption o! bushmeat is lin*ed to diseases li*e ./0/A/D1# 2bola# 1A31# Anth a,# and 4assa !eve and to add to that the loss o! "ildli!e th eatens the lives o! those "ho actually need to !ood not 5ust to sell and ma*e a p o!it# but to su vive. 6ith bushmeat becoming mo e

sca ce li*e anything p ices go up# ma*ing li!e !o the poo a lot ha de . 1ome solutions to this p oblem include: la" en!o cement to step in mo e# a eas that contain p otection# people being mo e a"a e o! this c isis# and education and t aining. &ne "ay "hich "ill be used in this p o5ect is !inding the genome o! a specie to be able to identi!y "hat it is so one can dete mine i! it is an endange ed o th eatened specie. Conclusion: #hy is it important to know the genome of an organism? $ow does it help us to identify endangered and threatened species? It's important to know the genome of an organism because if you consume it not knowing what's in it or worse what exactly it may be, you may be consuming some animal that is harmful for you. Besides that you can track down were the animal came from when finding out it's genes. Knowing an animal's genome is helpful for identifying endangered and/or threatened species because it helps researchers know who is or what area is still killing these species. An example would be Bushmeat, people in the ongo will sell it to you saying it's cow when really it's Bushmeat.